


Idle in Neutral

by svecounia



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 09:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4914439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svecounia/pseuds/svecounia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max witnesses Furiosa's despair from the safety of the war rig. Nux tries to piece it all together, but either answers come easier to half-lives or they don't live long enough to regret wondering. A brief moment of bonding between blood bag and war boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idle in Neutral

"Stay in the rig."

In maybe thirty-six hours together, Max had seen enough to know that when Furiosa heard a warning, it wasn't dismissed. There was something here he didn't know like she did, and not for the first time – he knew how to read gathering clouds in the western sky, and he knew to check the wind for dust from pursuit vehicles still distant enough to escape. But Furiosa knew the culture in a way he never could. Too removed for too long, the signs were lost on him. If he told her something was bait and she still opened the door, then there was more to the story than he knew.

He huddled with the wives and the war boy, the seats of the rig creaking as they sat forward and craned their necks behind him. The metal structure jutted upwards, lonely and foreboding, but Furiosa approached with poise, arms not raised in surrender, but instead with palms up in greeting and understanding. 

No. Something was already wrong.

"I am one of the Vuvalini," she called out to the dunes. "Of the Many Mothers."

Max could hear the wives shifting in the back, their anticipation mounting as his coiled into apprehension just as quickly. Furiosa went on, citing names and lineage he knew she never would have shared with him or anyone else were she not so certain of their victory. His heart clenched. 

Motorcycles revved beyond the dunes, and one by one they peeled over the crests, kicking up arcs of sand, and even as they skidded to a halt in front of Furiosa, weapons drawn, she did not change her stance. Max noticed that for their part, the figures' draw of their rifles seemed halfhearted.

"They know her." The blonde one was very discerning. Max's lips tightened. Sure enough, Furiosa and the bait woman shared an embrace, and he could only sit back in his seat, defeated. He could see her fate play out before his eyes, he knew this sweep of bitter disappointment, hot and choking like bile, but before he could drag up the words to stop them, the war boy and the wives had lost to their restlessness. One door opened, then the other—

"Wait."

None listened; boots had already collided with soft sand below.

"War boy," he growled again, more insistent, and to his credit the war boy did pause, looking from Max to the women and back again, brow furrowed in confusion.

"They lowered their guns."

"This isn't right." 

"Imperator thinks so. She got us this far."

"She's wrong."

"Well if she is, I'm not stayin' back here out of the fray." The door slammed shut with a stubborn creak of hinges and the war boy strode forward to join the group. What _fray_ was that sickly thing prepared for? Max knew the war boy was unarmed apart from whatever oddities he carried in his pockets, and even then he was too weak to do much. He could see the discomfort dawn on the war boy as the desert-hewn women regarded him with sharp eyes and tightened grips on their guns. 

Max glanced at Furiosa next and promptly dropped his eyes. It felt too intrusive, watching what was undoubtedly to come next. For all her sacrifices and efforts, of course there was no escape. She'd been uncharacteristically optimistic to think otherwise. There was no _leaving,_ there was only putting distance between yourself and whatever was trying to kill you, past, present, or future.

A ragged scream ripped into his willful ignorance and Max's gaze was dragged back through the passenger-side window no matter how he tried to resist. It was a cry he'd remember, unique among countless others, though all of them mourning or desperate or defeated. 

Furiosa was there on her knees, she'd staggered off a ways, metal arm discarded behind her, torn, beaten, battered, and tragically small against the wide, unending wasteland.

There was no Green Place. Of course there wasn't. 

Max heaved a sigh and leaned back in the driver's seat, head tilted back to stare at the hammered tin logos stamped into the war rig roof. He had the energy to pity her, but only just. Beyond that, he had only a deep hollow carved out long ago by disappointment after disappointment. He hadn't been foolish enough to hope he'd make it, but he'd fallen into the trap of hoping she might. Heat pooled behind his eyes. He closed them.

"Blood bag."

Max startled badly and his hand flew to his pistol – voices flickered like smoke behind his skull, and he only just noticed that the sun had set in the sky into a bloodied red. He squinted his eyes and forced his focus to narrow on the war boy hanging outside the open window opposite. 

"We passed the Imperator's Green Place back west. The bog."

Max just grunted. The war boy's mouth creased as though he'd expected more acknowledgement – silent acceptance probably wasn't too common in a cult of screaming, silver-mouthed zealots. He tried again.

"There's food, they sent me to come get you. The Vuvalini, I mean." Max could tell he was trying out the word for the first time, not to mention filling silence with words as best he could. "The Imperator's with the bait. They won't come to eat, but there's just enough to go 'round with or without them, plus they have two crows they roasted over a fire." The war boy looked impressed, awaiting any sort of reaction from Max. It was a long time coming, then, in a gravelly rumble,

"Did anyone talk to her?"

The war boy's stilted eagerness faded, and he sighed, yanking open the door to swing into the passenger's seat and jerking it shut behind him. "Capable tried," he answered. He was looking down at his hands with a detached sort of reverence, as though he'd never heard of something so compassionate and admirable. "But it didn't really work. Said the Imperator probably couldn't bear it, after all she tried to do for them."

Max didn't respond. There was nothing to be said, no words that would ease the weight of Furiosa's loss, and even if there were, he wasn't going to share them with the war boy. But the war boy seemed determined to find his own words anyway. 

"D'ya think she was looking for Valhalla?"

Max just frowned and the war boy pressed on.

"The Green Place. Maybe that's what the Vuvalini call Valhalla, and the only way for them to make it is to escape…something? Or bring people along? They're not war boys so maybe the rules are different. Maybe they're different for all women?" He looked quite burdened by the complexity of his little fragmented theology. "It makes some sense, I mean they couldn't get _captured_ or it wouldn't be glorious, so maybe they just have to keep running until they find it."

He could feel the war boy's gaze on him, prodding him for any kind of confirmation or disagreement that would help him piece together everything that had happened into a framework that fit his understanding of the world. But Max could give him nothing, and eventually the war boy sighed again.

"I do think Valhalla needs to be chased one way or another," he said with a self-affirming nod, but he blinked after a moment and looked down at his hands again. "Or else I would have made it already. I'm just not running fast enough."

Max looked over at him and ran his tongue over his teeth, considering. "You gonna run with her, then?"

The war boy seemed heartened by Max's sudden involvement in the one-sided conversation. "With the Imperator or with Capable?"

Max shrugged.

The war boy chose for himself and grinned, his scarred lips stretching wide. "As far as I can."

Max's eyes dropped to the twin lumps on the war boy's neck, and he wondered vaguely whether it was easier or harder to be hopeful if you were half-life. He was interrupted by an unexpected, aggressive ruffle of his hair, but just as he jerked out of reach again with a warning growl, fist raised, the war boy had already opened the war rig door again.

"C'mon, blood bag, dinner."

**Author's Note:**

> For War Rig Family Appreciation Week over on Tumblr (a smidge early). Max's choice to stay in the rig while everyone else, Nux included, went to meet the Vuvalini begged for a little fleshing out. Plus I love Nux's misguided affection for Max -- doesn't he know he's the baby of this little family?


End file.
